Their tempers becoming increasingly frayed, Republican politicians in Florida meet today to embark on a process which could ensure that George W Bush becomes president, regardless of what happens to the court challenges to his declared election.

They propose to authorise the state legislature to fill the state's 25 seats in the electoral college with people who will vote the Republican candidate into the White House. The Democrat leader in the state senate warned last night that this would provoke a constitutional crisis.

With the December 12 deadline for the electoral college vote fast approaching, Democrat lawyers are pinning their hopes on Florida's judges and the US supreme court.

Tomorrow all the ballots from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties will be delivered in security vans to a judge in Tallahassee. Last night the court asked for all the ballots, not just the disputed 14,000 which the Gore camp wants recounted, to be produced.

But state Republicans are beginning to flex their political muscle. A committee under their control spent a second day yesterday discussing whether to call a special session of the state legislature to appoint electors who will vote for Mr Bush. The state senate and the congress are both controlled by Republicans.

Tearful voters from Palm Beach county, giving evidence to the committee, told of their horror on realising that they had voted for the rightwing Reform party candidate, Pat Buchanan, instead of Al Gore, because of the confusing "butterfly ballot" used in the county.

One by one they urged the committee to consider that many voters had been disenfranchised, and not to act hastily by, in effect, appointing Mr Bush.

It was further evidence that the Florida election has by any standards been inefficient and chaotic, or possibly worse. Spectators cheered as angry voters berated the committee's 14 members for considering giving the state electors the authority to vote for Mr Bush.

"I certainly hope we are not here simply because the Bush campaign needs a backup plan in the event our courts indeed require every vote in Florida to be counted," the senate Democrat leader Tom Rossin said, voicing the Gore camp's fear that Mr Bush is being bounced into the presidency.

One of the Republicans on the committee, Johnnie Byrd, said: "I think there's a proverb that says 'he who hesitates is lost'." He and others of the eight Republicans on the committee said that if they did not act there was a danger that Florida's voters would not be heard at all.

A member of the public, the Rev Richard Harris, told the committee: "Listen to the voice of the people." If they appointed electors to give Mr Bush the presidency they would be behaving "no better than thieves".

War veterans expressed anger that recounts might not take place. "Bush is trying to steal the election," Harry Abramovitch said to cheers.

The Republicans looked increasingly uncomfortable as more evidence emerged that thousands of Gore voters had not had their votes counted. Voters warned that they would remember when it came to the state elections whether the committee's members had acted "hastily" and taken the political, rather than the legal, way of choosing the president. The dilemma facing the Florida politicians is that it is usual for the governor to authenticate the state electors, and the governor is George W Bush's brother, Jeb.

Mr Rossin said when yesterday's session closed: "This was a done deal three weeks ago. They are going to create a constitutional crisis."